The electronics industry continues to pursue integrated circuits with enhanced performance and increased density to meet consumer demand. Capacitors are key required devices for the fabrication of integrated circuits. Typically, a capacitor includes two electrodes separated by a dielectric material, e.g., a parallel plate capacitor.
As semiconductor device critical dimensions have been reduced in order to increase the density of integrated circuits, traditional capacitor designs have exhibited scaling problems. These scaling problems include, for example, increases in resistance and leakage currents, and reductions in capacitance and fabrication yield.
For instance, reducing the size of a capacitor leads to a reduction in the amount of conductive material used in the capacitor and associated contact structures, increasing the resistance of the capacitor. In addition, the reduction in size (i.e., area) leads to a smaller capacitance of the capacitor.
In an effort to address these scaling problems, other capacitor designs have been introduced, such as metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors and metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitors. These other designs can be rather complex and can require additional masking steps, leading to reduced fabrication yield and increased fabrication costs, respectively.